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Peak Mountain 3

One Piece at a Time

FA Ben Johnson, Tim Foster; Sept. 2020
CREATED 
UPDATED 

Description

This route climbs the obvious left facing broken corner system in the center of the buttress, left of the blocky section which hosts easy getaway and the perfect crime. The climbing is enjoyable and sustained with comfortable belays and high quality rock!

Pitch 1 (5.8, 55m): Climb an open book, traverse up and right across a slab into a right facing dual cracked corner. When the corner slabs out, continue straight up and belay below the treed ledge.

Pitch 2 (10d, 25m): Climb up and left to gain the treed ledge (watch for loose rocks), from the ledge climb the left slanting crack into the tight corner and continue straight up to another treed ledge and comfy belay (tread lightly on the stacked blocks at the top of the corner). Variation: the hardest climbing on this pitch can be circumvented by climbing up and right before entering the corner and then following a crack back left to rejoin the second half of the dihedral (this goes at around 5.10).

Pitch 3 (5.9, 40m): Climb a short section of shrubby hand crack to a ledge, and then continue straight up the face and broken corner & crack system, aiming for the beautiful left facing dihedral above. Step right just before the dihedral and belay on a mossy ledge.

Pitch 4 (5.10, 25m): The money pitch. Step back left and into the tips corner, a short section of lay-backing at the top of the corner leads to a ledge and a large snag. "Honey, take me for a spin"

Pitch 5 (5.9, 45m): Traverse down and right from the ledge to the base of a steep right facing handcrack/layback corner, at the end of the corner continue straight up and find a belay.

Pitch 6 (4th & low 5th): The last section of climbing could be pitched out to the summit, but is easy and wandering, making scrabbling convenient.

After doing the prescribed descent once, (took multiple trips to establish this route) we opted to tag a second 60m and rap down trees on the route. It took 3 full 60m rappels to reach the ground starting from a tree slightly up and left from the belay atop pitch 5.

Ben's TR:

https://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/topic/103679-tr-cutthroat-wall-one-piece-at-a-time-510d-09202020/?tab=comments#comment-1160419

"And negatory on the cost of this mow-chine there Red Ryder

You might say I went right up to the factory

And picked it up, it's cheaper that way"

Location

This route is located about 150 ft. climbers left and up from Easy Getaway. Look for a small outcropping of trees uphill of the easy getaway start, and begin in the rock scared open book just left of this patch of trees.

Protection

Doubles from BD .1 to 3, a 4 is handy but not required. Rack of nuts, RP's are nice.


Routes in Cutthroat Wall